Thread by @deapoirierbooks

Guys, I want to talk about email marketing as an author for a minute. For those of you that don't know, my day job is in internet marketing, I've been doing it for sixteen years. And as someone who spends a lot of time in that world, some of the 'tips' I see for authors are WRONG

And sometimes borderline illegal (depending on the country). If you want to send emails for your author brand, please do some research before you start this. It's not something to be taken lightly, there are laws you need to follow. Every year new laws are being rolled out

So it's something you need to stay on top of. In the US there's CAN-Spam, Europe now has GDPR, and Canada has CASL. I can't break them all down here, but I really recommend doing your research if you're considering creating an email list. I'll cover a few important points below.

Now, the basics of email marketing: You need a physical address to place in your email footer. This can be a PO box if you don't want to use your home address. You also need an unsubscribe link. I recommend having one at the top and one at the bottom of the email.

Next: Building your list. DO NOT EVER ADD PEOPLE TO YOUR EMAIL LIST THAT DIDN'T ASK TO BE ADDED. EVER. Don't take people's email addresses of their website (Hey guess what, having a public email address is not mailing consent). Put a form on your website/facebook. That's it.

If people want your emails, they'll sign up there.

I will mention also, I'm incredibly dubious of the multi-author giveaways that offer a few free books then sign the respondent up for a million email lists. In my experience, people who sign up for emails for giveaways

will usually unsubscribe after it's clear they didn't win. What you want are active users engaged in your brand or your book, targeting the giveaway sector may not get you that audience. Obviously your results may vary, I'm sure a few people have had success with it.

That being said --- I've known a few authors that were very successful in getting email sign ups by offering novellas or short stories for free that existed in the same world as their main novel, as a 'reward' for signing up for emails. I think that's a better route to go.

What do you email them? Updates on your book, you, other books you dig, whatever. Be sure that you're including working links and that you've sent yourself test emails before sending to your list. If you're unfamiliar with HTML

& CSS, I recommend using a built in responsive template, most of those work in 90% of ESPs, so you don't need to worry much about breakage. There are many free email tools for authors/small businesses. Please use mailchimp or something similar. Do not send your emails from Gmail.

How often should you email? I don't think you should be sending emails as an author more often than once a month unless you have something VERY important to say. Some authors email every day, this is like stabbing someone 48 times. This is overkill. Don't do this.

Also, I think there's a lot of pressure to build email lists on authors that really doesn't make much sense to me. Email lists are something that will naturally grow as people become engaged in your writing. It doesn't happen over night (not for anyone/any company).

Don't pressure yourself into hitting certain email list benchmarks, or feeling like you don't matter because your list only has X number of people on it. You'll get there.

And, here's a longer blog post that goes into a bit more detail. If you have questions, lemme know, I'll make adjustments to the post.

dhpoirier.com/blog/email-mar…